They rest from their labours. All their struggles,
disappointments, failures, backslidings, which made
them unhappy here, because they could not perfectly
do the will of God, are past and over for ever.
But their works follow them. The good which they
did on earth—that is not past and over.
It cannot die. It lives and grows for ever,
following on in their path long after they are dead,
and bearing fruit unto everlasting life, not only
in them, but in men whom they never saw, and in generations
yet unborn.
Daniel iii. 16, 17, 18.
O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee
in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we
serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery
furnace; and He will deliver us out of thine hand,
O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O
king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship
the golden image which thou hast set up.
We read this morning, instead of the Te Deum, the
Song of the Three Children, beginning, ’Oh all
ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise
him, and magnify him for ever.’ It was
proper to do so: because the Ananias, Azarias,
and Misael mentioned in it, are the same as the Shadrach,
Meshech, and Abednego, whose story we heard in the
first lesson; and because some of the old Jews held
that this noble hymn was composed by them, and sung
by them in the burning fiery furnace, wherefore it
has been called ’The Song of the Three Children;’
for child, in old English, meant a young man.
Be that as it may, it is a glorious hymn, worthy of
the Church of God, worthy of those three young men,
worthy of all the noble army of martyrs; and if the
three young men did not actually use the very words
of it, still it was what they believed; and, because
they believed it, they had courage to tell Nebuchadnezzar
that they were not careful to answer him—had
no manner of doubt or anxiety whatsoever as to what
they were to say, when he called on them to worship
his gods. For his gods, we know, were the sun,
moon, and planets, and the angels who (as the Chaldeans
believed) ruled over the heavenly bodies; and that
image of gold is supposed, by some learned men, to
have been probably a sign or picture of the wondrous
power of life and growth which there is in all earthly
things—and that a sign of which I need
not speak, or you hear. So that the meaning
of this Song of the Three Children is simply this:
’You bid us worship the things about us, which
we see with our bodily eyes. We answer, that
we know the one true God, who made all these things;
and that, therefore, instead of worshipping them,
we will bid them to worship him.’
Now let us spend a few minutes in looking into this
hymn, and seeing what it teaches us.
You see at once, that it says that the one God, and
not many gods, made all things: much more, that
things did not make themselves, or grow up of their
own accord, by any virtue or life of their own.
